Impact - Philippi Public Library

Judy Larry, Library Director for the Philippi Public Library, tells how the Run For It has helped her organization, from building repairs to personal fitness..

Judy Larry: My name is Judy Larry. I’m with the Philppi Public Library. We serve Philippi and regions around Barbour County, West Virginia.

We’ve been involved in the Run For It for several years raising money for the library team in the Run For It. And that’s been very good for us. It allows us to raise funds and hopefully receive additional funds each year at the race. It’s been very good for us because we’ve been able to maintain our 95 year-old building and continue with our programs. And just to pay for things that we wouldn’t have been able to do. And it’s a way for us to do that in such a way that people pay attention because it is a large amount when we come back and receive those funds, it’s a very large amount for us. And it’s larger than anything else we can do otherwise.

This year, we’ve had a major project going on where we had to repair and replace our roof – a multilevel roof. We have asbestos in part of it and that had to be covered with new roof on it. And we have had to replace some of the roof and the flashing and everything that goes along with that. We’ve also replaced two 25 year-old heating and air-conditioning systems with money that we’ve raised from the Run For It.

We couldn’t have done any of that without it. And it’s money that we’ve saved over time for that.

We do promote healthy activities at the Library. We try to do that. We’ve even tried to have a team walk every evening and things like that at times. For me personally, I think it’s helped me get better in shape and keep better in shape by losing some weight lately – 25 pounds and I’m very happy about that and I’m telling the world here. You know, it’s made us more conscious about such things and more conscious with our children and things like that – our programs we have for children we try to make a little bit healthier. Things like that. It just makes us more aware.